


the other shore

by en passant (corinthian)



Category: Fate/stay night
Genre: Gen, Moving On
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-03-13
Updated: 2016-03-13
Packaged: 2018-05-26 10:29:56
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,693
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6235081
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/corinthian/pseuds/en%20passant
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Waver and Rin, post-FSN.</p><p>With some liberties.</p>
            </blockquote>





	the other shore

There's no stopping her.

There's something nostalgic about her attitude. He likes to think it's because she's young and too full of energy. He would like to imagine it's something he could say to a colleague in passing — young magi these days have such energy. Instead, he ends up scowling at everyone and whenever he sees her his scowl darkens.

He told her that he wouldn't teach her,not directly. He told her that she would have to make it on her own, after he sponsored her. She's a Tohsaka, isn't she? Her family has secured their place at Clocktower a long time ago. He said it all with derision and expected her to crumble, or at least crack a little. He had that effect on people, especially students.

Instead she raised her chin and looked at him. There was something hideously imperious in her expression even though she was just a teenage girl. (He knew that look, though, it was one he used to practice himself — take me seriously, this world is something I can conquer on my own.)

"Thanks for your concern, but I intend on paving my own way. I'm only using you for a stepping stone. Don't be offended but I intend to leave you in the dust." She said.

"You're a thousand years too early." He couldn't help himself, he replied immediately.

Her smile grew brighter.

* * *

Rin Tohsaka is a girl who thrives on challenge.

Waver Velvet — Lord El Melloi II — can't help but to resentfully appreciate her. She has so many things he never did. A true old bloodline, a likable disposition that makes her popular, a relentless belief in herself.

She has intuition about things in a way he never did.

He would prefer to think of her uncharitably or as another of his students with a small mind, small goals, a petty magus who won't ever amount to much. But he's always been able to pick out the good ones, the ones who will go far.

He refuses to teach her, still.

* * *

He always drinks on the day that he summoned Rider. The only other option is to drink on the day that he lost, that Rider gave him one last imperative and faded into dust, and Waver refuses to do that to himself. He spitefully thinks that Rider would have wanted him to celebrate the good and not dwell on the bad. That there wasn't that much bad at all, that this is how it goes. In the end, the war is long and a single battle isn't the deciding factor.

(But a single defeat can change the tides.)

Waver always drinks at the same bar, one near his apartment, because by the time he's done it's difficult to find his glasses and he's belligerent. He's only halfway through his night when he hears Tohsaka.

She's been in one of the side booths, quiet. He hadn't noticed her but now her voice rises in a way he's never heard in class, or on campus. She sounds, frankly, not at all like the model student he's come to appreciate and far more like the teenage girl who burst into his office one day and demanded he sponsor her.

"Hah!? What's that? If you even _think_ the wrong thought I'll fly there and strangle you myself!"

He thinks, she must be drunk. It would be better if he kept drinking, himself, and didn't nose into her business. It's a special night, after all. Rider would have wanted him to enjoy it.

"I made a _promise_." Rin's voice rises even more, tight with an emotion that strikes a chord with Waver. She shouldn't be yelling her secrets in a bar. He gets up, moves to her booth and intends to lean down and give her a scolding.

Her eyes are red, the phone in her hand is dropped to the table in an angry motion. She only notices him after she's taken another long drink from her cup.

"Rough night." He says, delicately as he can. It comes off as admonishing anyway.

"You think? What kind of old man are you coming here to drink anyway? Get a life." Rin snaps, immediately, and then buries her face in her hands. "Professor. This isn't exactly a good conversation night."

"For me either." Waver admits and then sits across from her.

She's stubborn, but he's more sober so he gets to be more stubborn. They both agree to stop drinking — because she's a student and because he needs to be a Better Role Model and even though they both think that appearances are lame they're also necessary and also they both agree not to rat the other out. So they order fried squid and tea and Rin turns her phone off.

When they part for the night she says: "This is kind of a bad anniversary night... that's all."

He doesn't admit it is for him too, just tells her to hurry up and go home he's tired of seeing her face.

* * *

She asks him to be her independent studies adviser.

He rejects her.

She returns the following day and sets him a challenge. If she can't break the lock on his office door in a month, then she'll give up.

He tells her that he'll only accept her challenge if the deadline is one week.

In true Tohsaka style she tosses her head, settles her hair over her shoulder and smiles. It's a grin that could stop the world.

"A week? Don't make me laugh, I'll do it in three days."

In the end, he finds her sleeping outside of his office at four in the morning, her notes and incomplete spells scattered around her, on the dawn of the third day. She doesn't quite crack his ward, but she's close enough — he tells her it isn't pity, but rather a professor's responsibility. She's frustrated at herself and tells him point blank that she'll work until her hands bleed and never disappoint him.

"Good, I expect nothing less."

* * *

Tohsaka tells him that she won't babysit him, but he needs to shape up. She can't have her advisor never show up to important meetings, to dress like a slob and to be so cranky. She hassles him into attending shoulder rubbing events and drags him to the beach one weekend because he needs to get out.

He knows she isn't lonely because she also has friends, goes out with her classmates and flies back to Japan regularly for family things. A month before graduation, however, they're working on a project and she slams her hands down on the table. The papers and crystals all jump and the candle almost tips over.

"Professor."

"That's dramatic, Tohsaka."

"You're a lonely person." She starts and he's going to interrupt, to say he isn't and she really has gotten her priorities mixed up. "And prickly, unsociable and you always wear the same clothes which is either because you don't know how to dress yourself or you're stagnated as a human being."

"Tohsaka — "

"But. When I was younger I thought I knew everything. That I owned the world around me and nothing could stop me." Rin doesn't look away. She's embarrassed and the blush creeps across her face and Waver has the sinking feeling that it might be a confession and he really hopes it isn't because he thought she was more level headed than that. "I made a promise to someone and I don't think it was a very good one. It's about something that's out of my hands, but I don't want to let him down. There's nothing more than I want than to not let him down. I just wanted to thank you." 

"Tohsaka if this is a confession — "

"What?! No — you!? No way! Augh! No!" Rin slams her hands onto the table again and the candle topples over. They both scramble to save their work and put out the candle and turn the lights back on and Rin is flustered and red-faced and Waver coughs into his fist.

"Ah." He says.

" — I just never thanked you for that night at the bar! Now I see I never should have thought to!" Rin yells.

Waver coughs again. "... you're a good student, but far too emotional at times and seem to put your foot in it when least convenient. But that's not a feeling I don't understand either. Now, clean up! You'll never hear me say those words again."

"Admitting to a weakness isn't very magus-like, hm?"

"Who admitted to a weakness? Huh!"

* * *

It's coincidence. But the following year on the anniversary of Rider's death, Tohsaka invites Waver out to a gathering. Her family is in from Japan, and the weather is nice and they were all thinking of going out to Bath to see the old roman bath house. It's a bit of a trip but surely he can stomach being in a car for that long — Waver is sure he can, but Tohsaka looks a little green at the idea — he agrees if only to distract himself from moping.

"The world ended up being bigger than I thought," Tohsaka says to him as they wait for her sister to arrive. "It makes you wonder what else is out there, doesn't it?"

Waver snorts, "Don't sound too excited, we have maps. People have traveled the whole globe already."

She laughs. "Do you really trust everyone else's opinion on everything so readily?" He can recognize her tone, it's challenging all over again.

It's funny, because he had never thought that he would miss that. After he became a professor and after his entire world changed and shifted and after the War. After it all, everything had felt muted and far away and he could only strive forward to fulfill a promise that he hadn't truly understood.

"Trust? I've earned my knowledge, something it seems you're still figuring out."

"Next — I want to see the world for myself." She says, looks out down the long road before them.

"Report back what you find, but I'll bet it's nothing I haven't seen before." Waver sets another challenge for her.

"Just you wait," Tohsaka promises.


End file.
